Equilibrium
by bookwormLynae
Summary: (Sequel to Aftermath) The Avengers have begun to clean up after the wreck HYDRA has left, and are doing it well. But they themselves have found themselves in a delicate balancing game of personal and public, friends and family, and right and wrong. They are picking up the pieces of SHIELD, but now they must pick up the pieces of themselves.


Wrong had subtitles in Tony's head. A little wrong, kind of wrong, very wrong, just wrong…..And each of those had sub-heading, or justifications, or clarifications. But blasting his way through the hallways of a SHIELD base was every kind of wrong imaginable. He had been at this base once before when an Avengers op in Washington went south, and they had headed to California. They were only miles from his Malibu house, which they were using as their base of operations. It was small for a SHIELD base, but an older one, and much less organized, and badly-lit, with winding, unlabeled corridors that were making this a nightmare. Another HYDRA minion opened fire from a doorway, and he spun, peppering the door and wall with repulser fire. The gun clattered into his path, and he scooped it up, cautiously poking his head into the doorway. Another shadowy hall loomed, and he groaned, "Another hall, three doors down on the right from hall C." Murmurs of assent (and disgust) came over the comms.

Black Widow's cool tone rang through his helmet. "That should intersect with the Captain's hall in a few yards. I'm in the computers. JARVIS is uploading."

Updated floor plans ran across his display, and he scowled. "Got lots more than we thought. Bruce, our labs are in the basement, on the right."

"Thor, on escort. Hawk, Widow, when the computers are done, finish your hall. Falcon, how are looking from the air?" Steve stated over the comms.

Sam answered. "All planes and copters are grounded. You don't have anyone coming in from out here."

"Good. Stay out there, and round up any we push out." Steve ordered.

"Got it, Bossman." Sam responded jauntily.

Tony continued up the hall, scoping out each room, and calmly blasting anyone who got in his way. the SHIELD uniforms were still bothering him. His brain screamed WRONG, and JARVIS had held back the repulser fire until he had vocally authorized it. But he shoved it all to the back of his mind and focused on his task. Most of the rooms were standard offices, with no occupants. Occasionally they had armed, armored minions which were no problem for the suit and its newest upgrades. None of the rooms, however, had anything terribly important in them, until the last one on the hall. "Cap, we've got a room full of paper files. Must be kind of important, because they've got fire…stuff ready."

Bruce's voice sounded over the comms. "I've got everything from the labs. There were some weird gaps in the computer, and I've got some interesting samples. i wish we could take some of this equipment."

Steve's voice answered. "Bruce, take what you want, Thor, you help. Gently, of course," he added hastily. "Tony, get whatever you can, and whatever is most important. I'm headed your way. Hawk, Widow, with us when you finish."

Sam reported in. "We've got a fire in the hangar. Looks like it was set deliberately. It's headed your way."

"Crap." Clint yelped. "There's flammable stuff in enough places to blow us sky-high."

Steve slid around the corner, and joined Tony in his quick picking through cabinets. "All in code." Steve groaned. "I don't know what to take."

JARVIS began reading off the paper Tony held. "J cracked it. Key-words, JARVIS." He flipped through papers, JARVIS rejecting or suggesting they keep them based on a quick scan. Files JARVIS rated as high priority Tony handed to Steve, who had clasped his shield onto his back, and let Tony heap his arms.

Tony's voice rang metallically through his helmet. "Got stuff on Winter Soldier." he mentioned, adding another thick folder to the stack.

Clint and Natasha slipped in the room. Tony tossed Natasha one of the files he had set aside. "Russian, I think." he explained. She glanced it over, and tucked it into her belt with a scowl. "Any others?"

Tony glanced up from where he was loading Clint's arms. "There." he nodded at separate file cabinet. "Why is this stuff paper?"

"Old." Natasha explained, "and a weird mix of super-classified and semi-irrelevant."

Sam's voice came from the hall as he clomped toward them. "Ya'll gotta get out. Now." he added, before anyone could object. "The other two and all their science crap are in the jet, and the fire is headed this way." He accepted the armload Tony handed him before pointedly heading out the door. Tony grabbed a last armload and glanced regretfully at the rest before following the others out the door.

They reached the jet about the time hundreds of tiny explosions began to split the building. They stood and watched as it completely burned.

Bruce appeared in the door of the jet buttoning his shirt. "Saved me some work." he observed.

The last three bases that they had cleaned out had been finished by the Hulk, and he had been prepared to do it again.

They watched the flame dwindle until they were certain that it would not spread.

"All right, troops!" Tony said cheerfully. "We've got stuff to do." He turned to Sam. "Race you back!" he exclaimed. His face mask slid down over his face as he took off. Sam ran three steps and jumped, his new, Stark-made wings whisking him off, keeping him right up with Stark. Thor gazed after them rather sadly.

"Go ahead." Clint urged. "We've got this, and watching you mope like a puppy isn't on my bucket list for the day."

Thor brightened, and swung his hammer, quickly becoming a third gleam in the sky.

Natasha rolled her eyes as she began firing up the plane. "St. Bernard." she called over the intercom.

Steve and Bruce exchanged a questioning glance.

"Nope." Clint fired back, heading toward the cockpit. "Great Dane or Basset Hound." he insisted.

Natasha re-appeared from the co-pilots seat as Clint took off. "We are attempting to decide what breed of dog Thor most resembles." she explained as she began stowing some of her larger weapons.

Bruce's slightly crooked smile appeared briefly. "Are you taking opinions?"

Natasha hmmmed in contemplation before nodding.

"St. Bernard." Bruce affirmed quickly.

"You've….been thinking about this?" Natasha asked, smiling slightly.

Bruce smiled again instead of answering.

Steve pulled off his cowl and rumpled his hair. He sat down on one of the benches with a sigh. "I think he looks like one of the big golden dogs. Golden retrievers." he decided, pulling off the harness that held his shield.

A smile crept across Natasha's face, and unabashed giggling came from the cockpit. Steve's brow furrowed.

"You're the golden retriever." Bruce explained.

Steve caught Natasha and Bruce in a wounded look that made Bruce wince. "You didn't ask?" Steve asked pathetically.

Natasha's gaze fluttered to the floor and back. "It was….obvious to both of us." she admitted. "We didn't disagree at all."

A boyish grin split Steve's face, breaking his practiced looking pout. "What is Tony?"

Natasha bit her lip, smiling slightly. "Later?" she offered, and the plane began to descend. "We have yet to decide."

As the plane settled on the runway, Steve began grabbing papers. "Sure." he answered. "I've got an idea or two." he admitted.

Bruce chuckled from the back of the plane.

The engine cut, and Clint came out of the cockpit, carrying his bow and quiver, and grinning from ear to ear. Steve caught his amused glance and shared his smile.

When the door opened, they were greeted by a vociferous argument over who won, and why Thor was or was not disqualified from the race.

The argument was never settled to anyone's satisfaction, but all of their collected equipment, papers, and data eventually made it into the house. Pepper occupied the breakfast bar in the kitchen, with two laptops in front of her, and a phone pressed to her ear. She greeted Tony with a kiss and the rest of them with a gracious smile, all the while managing her phone conversation.

All of the papers and the flash drive of information were taken to what functioned as their planning room, and the equipment and samples Bruce had collected were taken to the basement lab.

The team took an hour to take showers, change, and grab something to eat. After that, they slowly trickled into their war room, holding their food or preferred electronic devices. Tony was the first to arrive, carrying stacks of freshly printed paper. He had run all of the encrypted files through JARVIS and printed out decoded copies for the team to work from. He had left the Russian files for Natasha to translate. Bruce wandered in next, tablet in one hand and a steaming mug in the other. Sam and Thor came in next, talking and laughing about their flying race, and both carrying a sandwich and coke. Clint and Steve entered one after another, both carrying coffee cups. Natasha entered last, licking ice cream off of her spoon, and carrying a half-full tub of Ben & Jerry's.

They were accustomed enough to post-HYDRA work that they each took or found their jobs. Natasha took a highlighter to her Russian files, marking things that she would need to translate for the team. Anything pertaining to the Winter Soldier went to Steve and Sam. Science went to Tony and Bruce, the electronic stuff went to Clint, and Thor was given anything pertaining to extraterrestrials or super-powered people. They worked in companionable silence for a long while. Much of the information was duplicates of what they already had, but some of the information that Steve and Sam had was original, and Natasha's files were nothing like they had seen before. They entered and catalogued all the new information, with, of course, JARVIS's help.

When all the papers and information was set aside, a discussion was in order.

Tony was the one to lead off. "We've got the Canada base, and the partial New Mexico base left to deal with. Nobody's been communicative, but Hill has said she thinks the New Mexico base is going to be a disaster, and the Canada base not even a problem."

Bruce flicked his fingers on the table, bringing up a hologram. "We don't have any sort of plans for the New Mexico base. It was completely destroyed, and reconstruction was started, but it is vastly different. All I've got," he informed them, twisting the display, "Is the old plans, including what was destroyed, and what was left intact. Any further demolition or construction is up in the air."

Steve leaned back in his seat, looking over the plans. "I think we'll need Tony and Sam in the air, see if we can get anything from that. If it's a half-wreck still, we could have people hiding anywhere. And they might be HYDRA and they might be SHIELD trying not to die."

Natasha tapped her spoon rhythmically on the table. Her face was slightly crinkled, and her eyes were closed. "I saw a report on reconstruction. It was not my area of expertise, nor was it my problem, so I only looked it over briefly. If I recall correctly, they had a security detail, and a construction team. They had a hunk of the above-ground patched together enough to have quite a few office people. There was a recovery crew going through the wreckage, since the Tesseract wasn't the only….thing in there. Then they were going to restart from the ground up. So we may have a skeleton building, but a couple of underground levels."

Clint fingered a knife that he had pulled from somewhere on his person. "The lay-out will be completely different. Just-in-case, you know."

"So yay." Sam quipped. "Like mice in a maze."

Thor's face darkened. Pitched battle he enjoyed. Puzzles and mazes had always fallen to another, and fighting a battle where he had no knowledge of the land seemed especially risky.

Tony flicked the hologram so that the useless lay-out crumpled back in the table. "Nice. This'll be fun. 'Cause we also have to go after whatever other stuff was down there. If there was anything like the Tesseract down there, HYDRA minions need to not have it."

"Can you not trace the magic?" Thor inquired.

Tony and Bruce shared a glance. "Maybe."Bruce answered cautiously. "But only if any magic is something like a gamma signal, or something. And there is a good possibility that there won't be that."

"Will they be moved, or still there?" Steve asked the two former agents.

Clint shrugged expansively, "It might have been loyal people that got them, so they are safe, or it was HYDRA and they were moved off location a long time ago, or when everything started to fall apart any bunch of random good guys or bad guys could have gone in and claimed it."

"Standard procedure, though, means they stored it off-site." Natasha explained. "And we haven't found anything at any of the other bases, which means it is probably in some sort of HYDRA base that was not associated with SHIELD."

"So can we just go ahead and find Barnes?" Tony asked. "At this point it is a double-edged sword. He may not know much, but he might know something. And he's next on our list anyway. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I am completely tired of attacking SHIELD bases."

The rest agreed, and Tony pulled up every file they had on the Winter Soldier. "JARVIS can only do so much. If he is still in the US, then facial recognition shouldn't be a problem. It's convincing him we aren't enemies and reversing the brainwashing that is the issue then. If he's out of the country, in say, India, then we don't really have video to go on."

"JARVIS," Steve requested, "Give me any track of his movements in the past six weeks that you possibly can."

"Certainly, Captain. Be advised that such a search will take approximately 5.7 hours."

"Thanks, J." he answered. He collapsed the files with a sweep of his hand. "Can we….work on something?" he requested with a wave of his hand. He slumped further down in his chair.

Sam's lips pinched, but Thor spoke before Sam could. "We will find him, Captain." he spoke solemnly. "You will not lose your friend." Brother was implied, and Steve glanced at him with understanding.

Clint nodded sharply. "We get it, Cap. We'll do everything we can, and that will be enough."

Tony shoved files back and forth across the table-screen. He finally looked up, a spark of something in his usually placid brown eyes. "We will find him. I swear it."

His intense gaze speared Steve to his seat. "I will find him."

Steve's breath caught in his throat. Time swam and blurred, and it could have been Howard across the table. But, no, then. Howard was a good man, but Tony was a better one.

Natasha tipped Steve's face toward hers and whispered something in Russian, then translated. "Brother. You are. And family," she continued, encompassing the table with a sweep of her hand, "keeps, helps, and saves family." A smile, soft and feminine and rare flew across her lips, and she dropped a kiss on Steve's forehead.

"I…..don't…need him." Steve faltered. "He…needs to be saved, and he IS a friend. But you are….more."

The ensuing silence was heady, and it rested until Steve straightened and pulled back toward the table. He inhaled deeply. "So, our department?" he suggested.

Tony's smile reappeared, flashing his teeth. "I hate to brag, but," he paused, flipping files open with his fingers, "We are brilliant!"

He settled into a report of their progress, and Steve let the words flow over him. Something was settled: there was work yet to be done, but they were settled in who, and what they were. The balance would be disturbed again, but for now, he would relish in the equilibrium he had finally found.


End file.
